How much was the best TV of 2024 affected by last year’s SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes? The answer is unclear but, as always, there was plenty of quality TV and limited series to be found on cable, network channels, and streaming. New and returning shows alike altered the landscape to show what’s possible in the medium. Some premiered with little fanfare, and some were predetermined to succeed.

2024 was my best year in recent memory for staying up to date on television and limited series. As any year, there were still some blind spots, but much less glaring ones this year. So when you don’t see shows like Industry, Nobody Wants This, Under the Bridge, The Diplomat, Pachinko, Interview With the Vampire, and Hacks, it’s not because they’re not worthy, but because I simply haven’t seen them yet. Nevertheless, here are the best TV shows of 2024:

Runners-Up (in Alphabetical Order):

• Baby Reindeer
• Bluey
• Disclaimer
• House of the Dragon
• Kite Man: Hell Yea!
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
• My Adventures With Superman
• Only Murders in the Building
• The Penguin

10. Welcome to Wrexham

Just because Welcome to Wrexham‘s third season was its most truncated yet doesn’t mean it was any less fun. Through eight episodes, FX’s sports docu-series continued to showcase the town that loves its storied football club, and the unique stories that revolve around it. When it didn’t have the everyday stories to highlight, Welcome to Wrexham was able to fall back on a riveting sports drama wherein both its men’s and women’s clubs sought promotion to tougher leagues. As frustrating as it was to get less of the show than usual, I commend the team behind the show for not stretching the storytelling too far past its breaking point. Whether we continue to get shorter seasons going forward, or the show returns to its format from its first seasons, I’ll always champion the heart and pathos within Welcome to Wrexham.

9. Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Take the spy thriller and mash it up with a classic rom-com, and throw in a case-of-the-week structure with a slew of A-list guest stars, and you have the glorious reboot of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Sleek, sexy, funny, and dramatic, the show took the premise of the 2005 film and deepened the characters and grounding it in a believable world. Maya Erskine and Donald Glover have some of the best chemistry of the year as two distrustful people forced together who eventually, inevitably fall in love on and off the job. The show continued to bolster Glover as a kind of current day King Midas, turning everything he works on into gold, even with a piece of IP that was more famous for its off-screen story than on-screen. A second season without Glover and Erskine likely won’t have the same magic, but so long as the show retains the same creative team, Mr. and Mrs. Smith could become an evergreen hit.

8. True Detective: Night Country

A new setting, and a new creative voice behind the camera went a long way to return the True Detective franchise to its former glory. Night Country heavily referenced the mythology of previous versions – mostly the highly acclaimed first season – but told a unique story about womanhood and indigenous rights because of showrunner Issa López. Anchored by best-of-the-year performances by Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, the show crafted a mystery full of dread and deeply frightening details that kept viewers engaged and curious from week to week. True Detective may never again reach the delirious highs of its first season, but Night Country firmly re-established the show on the right path.

7. Slow Horses

2024 was my first experience catching up with Slow Horses, but now I’m a firmly devoted fan. AppleTV+’s show may not reinvent the spy thriller wheel, but it does what it sets out to do with an appreciable efficiently. That being said, there’s rarely been a spy character on the level of Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb, an abrasive, irascible crank who cares more about his own needs than anything else, but always manages to come through when national security is on the line. Season 4 deepened the character of River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) and gave Jonathan Pryce some Emmy-worthy material as his ailing grandfather, and gave the rest of its ensemble enough solid material as well. In an age when TV shows can take years between seasons, it’s comforting to know that Slow Horses can deliver twisty material without repeating plot beats or storylines year after year, and 2024 was no exception.

6. The Bear

Season 3 of The Bear received the most divisive reaction so far, and it’s no coincidence that it was also the show’s most experimental. Right from the season premiere, showrunner Christopher Storer showed that he wasn’t going to pull any punches by diving deep into Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) fractured psyche. The season that followed may not have reached the delirious highs of years past, but it maintained its focus on how destructive the pursuit of perfection can be. White and Ayo Edibiri, plus their all-star, Emmy-winning cast continued to show they’re the most well rounded cast on TV by showing newer sides to their characters without betraying their cores. Season highlights included the flashback episode focusing on Liza Colón-Zayas’ backstory, and the two-hander with Jamie Lee Curtis and Abby Elliot as the latter goes into labor. Yes, it’s debatable whether or not The Bear is a comedy, especially after the almost complete lack of jokes within season 3, but there’s no doubt it’s still among the best.

5. Fallout

Fallout had no right being as fun or enjoyable as it did, but I remain thankful. For as proliferative as the genre has become, video game adaptations have a less than stellar track rate. Add in the added difficulty of adapting a game with a hodgepodge of influences and stylistic flourishes, and I had my doubts on the potentials of a television series adaptation. Nevertheless, showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner managed to nail the tone of Fallout and grounding the series with a core group of likeable characters. Ella Purnell took the lead as a vault dweller venturing out of her comfort zone and seeing the world for what it really is, and Walton Goggins worked in both past and present as a man out of time. The first season of any TV series works primarily to establish the world, characters, and stakes, and Fallout season one set up a great deal of potential for the future, while still being funny and entertaining along the way.

4. Presumed Innocent

Maybe there isn’t anything particularly revolutionary about Presumed Innocent (admittedly hard to do when you’re following a film adaptation and a bestselling novel). But what showrunner and legal TV aficionado David E. Kelley did with the AppleTV+ series is a textbook case of a riveting mystery filled with interesting characters that kept viewers invested from week to week. Jake Gyllenhaal eases into the role of the sympathetic murder suspect who you can’t help but want to punch every time some slimy new detail is revealed about his personal life, and the show’s cast is a murderer’s row of character actors, played to perfection by Bill Camp, O-T Fagbenle, and Peter Sarsgaard. Too many murder mysteries build up to something grand but fail to stick the landing, but the show ends with a genuinely surprising finale, which changes the way you see the preceding events. Sometimes you just need something reliable from your TV series, and Presumed Innocent gets all the pieces right without taking too many stumbles.

3. Arcane

What might have been. Netflix’s adult animated video game adaptation finished out its run with a strong second and final season, but it feels like Arcane had only scratched the surface of its potential. Which is really saying something because, from the beginning, the show felt like it had a firm handle on its expansive universe. Gorgeous animation, exciting action, and well-rounded characters helped to make showrunners Christian Linke and Alex Yee’s series feel more complete than its first season. Arcane season two took the sisterly rivalry between Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell), and expanded its roster to look at the very nature of good and evil. I may not have always understood what was going on from moment to moment, but each twist and development always felt purposeful and truthful to the characters. Fantasy storytelling has rarely been so strong.

2. Shōgun

Plenty of TV shows and limited series attempted grand storytelling, but none accomplished what FX’s Shōgun adaptation did on a micro and macro level. Yes, the show dealt did epic, Game of Thrones-esque storytelling involving the delicate balance of power (often better than the Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon in the same year), but the show truly succeeded at creating indelible characters first and foremost. Most indelible were the performances of relative newcomers in America, like Anna Sawai, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Takehiro Hira, and Cosmo Jarvis. That Shōgun managed to center less on the white characters and more on the inner lives of the Japanese can’t be overstated either, avoiding the pitfalls of most stories where East meets West. Whether the show continues on past its limited series trappings or continues to faithfully follow James Clavell’s novels, Shōgun will go down as one of the finest TV literary adaptations in recent years.

1. The Boys

I’m writing this in a post-2024 election world, which means that season 4 of The Boys hits just a little different than when it premiered in the summer. The satire – which already felt like the show’s first priority over anything else – was even heavier this time around, and the targets of mockery were spared no mercy. Which meant that the comedy was funnier, the deaths more gruesome, and the subtlety out the window. What elevates The Boys above all others on this list is its effortless ability to combine all three of these elements, occasionally at the same time. Thankfully it could also fall back on the complex characters built up over the 3 previous seasons, and build up the relationships we’ve come to know so well. Showrunner Eric Kripke told even more stories of good versus evil, where the “good guys” are perhaps the most evil people imaginable. If only our real world didn’t resemble the heightened insanity of the world of the show so closely.